Last Friday we hosted a party in celebration of my husband's recent promotion. Since it was his party, I asked him to order his custom cake with the "sky as his limit." In return, I demanded his pay raise for the next 3 years. Fair trade, no?
Not surprisingly, he asked for a beer bottle cake. He'd gone to a recent cake convention with me and had raved about this:

Looks to me like someone just stuck some beer bottles in a cake. But upon closer inspection, they are indeed made from sugar.
How the what the huh?
Oh boy, the challenge had been set!
I started researching online how to make beer bottles out of sugar. I found places that sold molds, kits to make molds, and the actual bottles. All too expensive. I then found a tutorial that - if it worked - would only put me out $14.
So I bought a tub of this:

Then spent 3 days smearing it all over a real beer bottle. Each coat had to dry and it takes at least 12-15 coats to get it thick enough. Once the entire bottle is coated, you roll it off and TADA!....

It's not a pretty thing, I admit. The mangled bottle laying next to it was my first attempt at pouring the sugar. Obviously it didn't go well. The trick is to get your sugar heated up to over 300 degrees, than slowly pour it into the mold while rotating it over and over. Oh, and the sugar is as hot as molten lava. But if you wear big gloves and work the mold slowly, it will eventually harden and come out perfectly.
If that last sentence embarrasses you, trying being the one in the kitchen massaging this bad boy over and over ALL WEEK in front of your extended family. It got weird.
But it was worth it!

Custom made labels (regrettably not with edible ink...)

Yes, that's my husbands face:

The ice is also made from sugar - a special kind of sugar that doesn't yellow at high temperatures. Who even knew?!
The barrel was the cake - two cakes stack on top of each other. Both had three layes, one of chocolate, one of vanilla, and one of strawberry. Hmm... where's that picture? It looked good and was pretty darn tasty.
So, consider beer bottle cakes on the Roundhouse Cakes menu! What else am I gonna do with the mold?